Joel Spolsky: Nothing is simple. Anyway, I don’t think Extreme Programming really advocates zero design. They just say “don’t do any more design than needed,” which is fine. But that’s not what people hear. Most programmers are looking for any excuse they can find not to do basic design before implementing features. So they latch onto the “no-design” idea like flies in a bug zapper. Dzzzzzzt!
I had a manager like this at my last job; he was totally convinced that Extreme Programming meant we could all just jump in and start coding, like he always wanted to but had been taught not to. He was a cowboy coder at heart. And Joel’s right; that’s not what XP is all about, but those nuances get lost in translation somewhere.
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